Michèle Audette "a fighter" for missing and murdered aboriginal women

Native leader Michele Audette, of Mani Utenam, Que., smiles at the Assembly of First Nations Annual General Assembly in Toronto on July 19, 2012. Audette, president of the Native Women's Association, has written an emotional letter to the prime minister, pleading with him to do what it takes to end Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence's five-week-long hunger protest. Michelle Siu / The Canadian Press

From the moment she came screaming into this world, it was clear Michèle Audette wasn’t destined for an ordinary life.

At least, that’s the way her mother remembers it.

Évelyne St-Onge went into labour during the 12-hour train ride north from Sept-Îles to Schefferville, forcing the conductor to stop the locomotive in the remote Labrador highlands and radio for help. After being airlifted from the railroad to a hospital outside Labrador City, St-Onge gave birth to a girl who, from the outset, had a flair for the dramatic.

“Her mom would say, ‘When you were born, I knew you’d disrupt things,’” said a relative of Audette’s, in an interview with the Montreal Gazette. “It was clear she would carve a place for herself in this world. Madame just couldn’t wait for the convenient time to introduce herself, she had to do things her way.”

On Wednesday the Liberal government appointed Audette as one of five commissioners to oversee the national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women. The $53.8 million inquiry will explore the reasons why aboriginal women across Canada face such staggering amounts of violence.

More than 1,200 indigenous women disappeared or were murdered between 1980 and 2014. Hundreds of the victims’ family members are expected to testify at the inquiry, which will also explore the institutional failures that allowed the problem to persist for decades.

For months, rumours had surfaced that Audette would have a prominent role in the inquiry.

The 45-year-old Innu woman has strong ties to the governing Liberals — she unsuccessfully ran on the Liberal ticket in Terrebonne during last fall’s election. Audette also pushed for the national inquiry when she served as president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada between 2012 and 2014.

But friends and colleagues say it’s Audette’s character, and not her résumé, that qualify her for the long and painful task that lies ahead.

Throughout her time in the political arena, Audette has earned a reputation as someone with boundless energy and the sort of magnetism that most politicians spend a career trying to harness.

“When you speak to her, she locks eyes with you and listens and smiles and none of it feels fake,” said one Liberal staffer, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the commission. “She has this gift, this ability to make you feel like, even in a crowded room, you’re the only two people there. She’s a great listener and a warm, loving person. That will be a huge asset throughout the inquiry.”

Beneath the radiant exterior, she is said to possess another critical trait: Audette is a fighter.

Born to an Innu mother and a white Québécois father in 1971, she spent her childhood living in a form of exile. At the time, the Indian Act punished aboriginal women for marrying non-aboriginal men by revoking their Indian status.

Audette’s mother paid dearly for loving a non-aboriginal man: she was evicted from Innu territory and had to raise her children outside of the language and culture of her ancestors.

Over the years, Audette would speak publicly about the internal turmoil this caused her, about feeling as though she lived somewhere between two identities. She spoke about being taunted because of her mixed heritage, about often feeling like she wasn’t a whole person.

The pain of seeing her family torn apart by the Indian Act was one of the factors that led Évelyne St-Onge, Audette’s mother, to co-found Quebec Native Women, an indigenous rights group, in 1974. Her efforts helped the Supreme Court to overturn clauses of the Indian Act that punished interracial marriage.

By 1985, the federal government introduced legislation that would give status back to St-Onge, Audette and thousands of other women and children affected by the Indian Act.

The court ruling allowed Audette to embrace her identity and learn rudiments of the Innu language and traditional survival skills. But she says it also taught her to fight against injustice. Audette would follow in her mother’s footsteps, serving as president of Quebec Native Women from 1998 to 2004 and again from 2010 to 2012.

Audette, a mother of five, has spent most of her adult life steeped in politics. Her partner, Serge Ashini Goupil, is a consultant with the indigenous rights group Nation Innue and she was an associate deputy minister of the Status of Women under Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

One former colleague told the Montreal Gazette Audette’s work on missing and murdered aboriginal women shouldn’t be overlooked. The colleague said Audette made a number of powerful enemies in the Conversative government and RCMP.

“Behind the scenes, things got intense, (Audette) had to square off with deputy ministers, a cabinet minister and the RCMP and she never backed down,” said a former colleague, whose government job also prevents her from commenting publicly on the commission.

“Long before missing and murdered women became a national issue, it was people like Audette fighting just to keep the conversation alive. Of course, many, many other women played a huge part in this but so did (Audette).”

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